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Tape Backup Drive ??? any thoughts

Hi

I have a business, and data is very important after i have had a harddrive crash on me, i am thinking of installing a tape drive in the main comp, what is the standards out there-which is easy and best-how to plug in(IDE ???) and work with it....can anybody give me a tutorial of it. Thanks

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It truely depends upon the amount of data your talking about. You can establish a tape backup, cd-R/W to backup data to cd or even a second harddrive to mirror the original against. There are many ways to go about what your looking to do. A basic business oriented tape backup is a working approach and is fairly cheap and easy to incorporate into your working process. Perform some searchs on the web of tape backup drives. Here is a link that gives you some feedback on tape drive backups. http://forums.storagereview.net/
do a search (all terms) for tape drives. you will get results that discuss the best approach and drives to use.
Good Luck !!

> can anybody give me a tutorial of it.
pratigan> Most drives will come with easy installation instructions.

I agree with pratigan, go with a name brand and its instructions should suffice. I also agree that you consider using a writable CD, depending on your data needs.

One thing unsaid is that there is a different between HW and SW solution. Depending of volume and spending requirements, you could check out players like Veritas and Cheyenne, look for features available, and compare with features dedired. For example, does it require a special ID, would access be security issue, Can anyone in company run it as backup operator without requirement to give them extra privileges, can you easily filter, does it come with a scheduler process - and can it run unattended, does it require extras, such as equipment, bandwidth , is it easy to use - to perfrom the tasks as you desire, how easy is it for users to perform a restore operation...

First thing you need to do before you determine what solution to get... plan ahead.

1) What kind of Data to be backup? eg. normal files, open files, database files, or application files?

2) How big is your total data to be backup? e.g. to determine which backup drive to get.

3) How big is your backup window? Also determines which drive to get.. as speed does matter when you have a small backup window.

4) What platform/OS are you going to run your backup services/install backup device. Not all backup drives/software supports all platforms.

5) How critical will your data be? In any case of a disaster to your data, how fast do you need to get them up and running again? This will determines if you need additional options for your backup software. Eg, Intelligent Disaster Recovery Option from Veritas, or Disaster Recovery Option from Computer Associates.

6) Do you have many servers to backup? Determines whether you need remote agents to backup servers not connected to your backup devices.